Chapter 8

Down the hall from where Isaac was having his adventures, Joy and the rest of the rather confused people milling about suddenly realized that they were very tired. Some felt they needed rest because they had consumed all their energy in sustaining hysteria, others by constantly trying not to go hysterical, and still others by trying to calm the hysterical. Because of the large energy expenditure of all these activities, and the fact that a mild sleeping gas was being released into the air through the air ducts, they all succumbed to sleep.

After some time passed they, not surprisingly, awoke.

Also, not to surprisingly, they found themselves back in the room they were in before. The bad Brooks and Dunn holo-image was now replaced by a very good recording of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. This caused some to listen contentedly, some to complain loudly, one or two to writhe in pain, and, as you by now realize, one went hysterical. Of course there were three less people in the room than there was before, as Isaac was now laying in the middle of a bowling lane.

Many great philosophers have pondered why it was that Isaac landed on a bowling lane instead of on a pool table. This may seem like a very unimportant question, but it is not. The reason for this is that if one looks at the blueprints of this building one would find the bowling alley was on the floor above the floor he fell through, and the billiard room beneath. There is a very simple solution to this problem. The blueprints are wrong. This absurdly simple solution is also wrong.

As Isaac lay in the middle of the lane, looking at the ceiling, Joy looked down at him through the hole that had been once the floor above. "Are you OK?" she asked.

"Yea," replied Isaac. "I’ll be all right. I wonder where those other two guys went though."

"Other two guys?"

"Two guys I was talking to before I fell down here, you see ‘em?"

"No, but I think they were down there and then left."

"What makes you think that?" asked Isaac.

"The bootprints that lead from the pile to the door," observed Joy. She paused for a moment and then jumped through the hole to the top of the pile and over to Isaac. "Do you need some help?"

"No, I think I can get up." With this he raised himself from the floor and stood, but he still felt slightly dizzy. "Maybe I should sit down for a minute though." He sat down on the end of the lane, Joy sat next to him, and nothing happened for a while.